


roy orbison singing for the lonely

by Anonymous



Series: thunder road [1]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 21:05:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12218949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: So Betty didn't say anything, all the way down the block, while Jughead wrestled with how disgustingly winter wonderland the landscape had become and with the high pitched shriek of embarrassment in his head and with the dimple peeking out from one corner of Betty's mouth. He didn't really have any resolutions, he supposed. He only meant to continue the year as he had begun it.





	roy orbison singing for the lonely

Archie had worked on a few new songs over winter break. A few days before school started up again, the four of them gathered in his garage for an informal little concert, though Archie protested the term 'concert'. "Nonsense," said Veronica briskly, perching daintily on the hood of Fred's truck. "Not that you should be pressured, but if you're serious about this, Archie, you have to treat every performance like it's the real thing."

She glanced over to where Betty and Jughead were sitting on the stairs leading from the garage into the kitchen. A head tilt prompted their agreement.

"Wow us," said Jughead dryly.

"I'm sure you'll do great, Archie," said Betty.

In way of encouragement, perhaps only Betty's could be counted as supportive; and even hers was not as effective as intended. Betty had been saying such things to Archie since they were four-years-old and Archie had been contemplating competitive sand eating. Still, the three of them looked at Archie expectantly: Jughead, willing to be wowed; Betty, expecting to be wowed; Veronica, determined to be wowed.

The performance went off successfully enough. There were still some edges to sand smooth, some polishing to be done -- but Jughead's mouth quirked in a way he had once described as "Local Disaffected Youth Impressed Despite Himself", and there was a flattering softness in Betty's eyes when she smiled at Archie, almost like how she used to look at him. Veronica hopped down from the car. Her face with bright and her eyes were aglow: she came to him, already busy planning what kind of studio time he needed and who among the back-up instrumentalists she knew from New York to contact. Archie leaned over and kissed her, stopping the flow of words. Veronica gratifyingly relaxed into the kiss, content to put her plans aside for the moment. When they parted, Archie discovered that Betty and Jughead had already quietly slipped out of the garage.

* * *

There had been a brief warm spell in the last week of December, so the streets were all sludgy with half-melted ice. Snow was piled by the side of the pavement, gray and streaked with dirt. The tip of Betty's nose turned pink almost immediately when they emerged outside. Jughead, a steadying hand on her elbow as they went down the driveway incline, called her "Rudolph", which Betty immediately protested. "It's charming," Jughead assured her, and there could be no protesting that.

At the bottom of the driveway, they had a little crisis of gloves: Betty had forgotten hers at home. She offered to go in to fetch them, but Jughead shook his head. He pulled out his pair, put one on and gave one to Betty, then laced their ungloved hands together and tucked them into his coat pocket. Betty was pleased with this arrangement, so they continued down the sidewalk.

By unspoken agreement, they headed for a long loop around the neighborhood block. It was doubtful that Veronica and Archie would conclude soon. In any case, Betty had wanted the chance for a nice, quiet talk with Jughead in person. There was something about his voice, a certain warmth, a certain huskiness when he said her name, that the phone couldn't capture.

She glanced up at him. "Say my name," she said.

" _Say my name, say my name_ ," hummed Jughead, which made her laugh as intended. She bumped his shoulder with hers and looked up at him again. Something about the wintry grayness around them, the pale winter light, brought out the vivid blue of her eyes. Jughead, glancing down, saw, and swallowed, and said, "Betty," in the exact low rough voice she had wanted.

Betty ducked her head, hiding a pleased smile. They walked a little futher, silent but for the crunch of snow underfoot.

"Archie's songs were pretty good," said Betty eventually.

Jughead made a noise of half-agreement.

"Though, you know," continued Betty more pensively, "I never expected him to be so _expressive_."

"Or depressing."

"Right?" Betty whirled to look at him, her ponytail bouncing. "When he said he was getting into songwriting, _this_ was not what I was expecting."

"The inner life of Archibald Andrews. His secret sorrows, we know not."

Betty chewed on her lower lip and kicked at some loose snow. "Juggie, do you suppose -- was it Miss Grundy, maybe? Her whole Humbert Humbertiness --"

" _There's_ a picture," Jughead muttered.

" -- and then suddenly leaving like that, do you think it did a number on him?"

"Well, Miss Grundy." Jughead rolled his eyes hugely. "Somehow not even the weirdest part of this year. How soon do you think is too soon? I can't wait to be thirty and be like, hey, remember that time in high school when you were fucking the _music teacher_? Hey, remember that case of _statutory rape_?"

"Getting it on with the teacher, that's not just some .... some guy fantasy? You thought it was weird too?"

Jughead puffed his cheeks out and glared down at his feet. He rolled the words around in his mouth a few times. They were embarrassing; he told her anyway. It was a habit recently. "It's weird even to run into a teacher at the grocery store, to say nothing of sex.  You want a 500-word piece about school as an illusion of the authority state? Existing in immaculate self-sustaining --"

Betty squeezed his hand, laughing. "Me too," she told him. "In the back of my head, I still think my teachers live at school."

He looked down at the golden crown of her head, resting against his shoulder. For a wild moment, he wanted to say, _I did that_. _I lived there_. _It was less exciting than E. L. Konisberg made it out to be_. Then Betty would look at him with those huge blue eyes, bright and piercing like high-beams on a truck in opposite traffic, and she'd say, _Oh, Juggie_ ; and then they'd have to talk about why, and about F.P., and about the alcohol, and about the Serpents -- and he didn't want to, he didn't want to talk about any of it. It was a nice day. There wasn't any reason to upset her, or himself.

Anyway, it would keep. Some day, later on: when he could laugh with Archie about the music teacher, maybe he could laugh with Betty about his brief stint in homelessness. Betty might laugh. Betty might cry a little first; but after that -- she might laugh. She might tell him: _That's because you were staying at Riverdale High, Juggie, and Konisberg was writing about the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A museum is way more exciting_ ; which frankly -- bless her -- was an opinion only Betty Cooper would espouse.

Instead, he said, "Anway, I don't think he's pining over Miss Grundy, or more disturbed about that than _literally anything else_ recently. It's probably just normal, bottled up ... teenage ... boy.... feelings..." Jughead trailed off awkwardly.

Betty looked at him for several moments. Her expression was grave, but her eyes were bright.

"Oh geez," said Jughead. He braced himself.

"What are teenage boy feelings, Jughead?" asked Betty. She was laying on Good Girl Next Door thick.

"Betts," said Jughead.

She blinked wide eyes at him. "Do they involve sudden, unexplainable urges?"

"Come on."

"Did we learn about it in eighth-grade health class, Juggie? In that cinematic marvel, _The Miracle of Life_?"

Jughead eyed her balefully. Betty returned his gaze with huge, limpid cow eyes. He broke first. The city had planted elm trees all along the street, and there was one situated only two steps ahead. He hauled her along, crowded her up against the tree trunk. Their knees bumped. Betty was laughing, half-breathless with it. She looked up at him expectantly.

"Do you," she tilted her head, "have ... teenage ... boy --"

Jughead rolled his eyes, and bent down, and kissed her very firmly. It was not a very good kiss, because Betty kept breaking into giggles; it was a very good kiss, because he could feel the shape of her smile, taste the sound of her laughter. Her mouth was shockingly warm against his in the cold air, and very soft, and she smelled like cherry chapstick and clean laundry and the butterscotch cookies she had baked earlier that morning. His hands came up, cupping her face. Her cheeks were chilly.

He pulled back a little. "Are you cold?" he asked in a half-whisper.

She shook her head. The color was high on her cheeks, and the tip of her nose was still pink, and Jughead felt so strangely soft and fluttery his chest that he could not help leaning down and kissing the corner of her mouth.

"Oh, a thimble," said Betty, breathlessly, smiling up at him. Then she made a face. "But we're giving Mrs. Allen a free show."

Jughead glanced at the house they had stopped in front of. The elm tree gave some cover, but the leaves had all fallen and the branches were bare and Betty's jacket was a distinctive soft pink. "Is she a peeper?"

"She's on the Home Owners Association Board of Directors."

That didn't mean much to Jughead, and he would not have minded, really, giving Mrs. Allen a show -- but, then again, he didn't live here, and Betty did; and, more to the point, Alice Cooper lived here, and Betty lived with her mother. So Jughead shrugged his shoulders, and took Betty's hand again, and they continued their walk.

* * *

Apparently, a Home Owners Association meant that the houses in the neighborhood all had neatly shoveled driveways and neatly trimmed hedgerows and Christmas trees neatly discarded by the curb in early January. Mrs. Cooper had thrown the Coopers' tree out on the second, though the pine needles were still green and hadn't started to fall yet. Betty explained that it had less to do with the freshness of the tree, and more to do with the holiday spirit: namely, they had left the whimsy and comfort of Christmas behind and were now firmly into Resolutions. The Coopers wrote down their Resolutions and stuck them on the fridge. Jughead didn't have words for how puritanically Hawthorne-like it was. Betty's read like some checklist for college admissions from the guidance counselor. On their walk, she admitted to him that it was, in fact, the school guidance counselor's college admissions checklist for sophomores.

"Betty Cooper," said Jughead, delighted, "did you _copy it_?"

"I paraphrased," said Betty primly. "Mom was so busy at the start of the year with Polly and --" she waved a hand to encompass the entirety of _murder, baby, drug traffickers_. "So I am just ... reiterating for her. My resolutions for school this year."

Jughead considered. New Years' weren't really a thing at home -- not that Christmas was so festive, but they had had a tree at least, and JB had a CD of children's carols they would put on, and they always managed a few presents. New Years' was the inevitable backslide from that high watermark, the return to form. Resolutions were always made on Christmas and broken before New Year's.

Yet, this year. On Christmas Eve, Betty had pulled him into the laundry room just before dinner and produced a sprig of holly from behind her back and confessed, "I don't know where to get mistletoe. I read that they're parasites? Symbolically, that seems not ... great ..." --and holding the holly above his head, she went on tiptoe and kissed him. On New Year's Eve, while the rest of Veronica's guests milled about the living room with flutes of champagne, counting down to the ball drop, Betty had let him pull her out into the dark hall, and they sat down on the stairs, just the two of them and the bright spill of light on the carpet from the open door: she said, "I love you, Juggie" and he kissed her on the first stroke of midnight. And now here they were, almost a week into the new year, walking hand in hand.

He didn't know what to say, what to do, if he should pinch himself, when the other shoe would drop. Above, the clouds were scattering. The afternoon sun struggled through the overcast, thin and weak, hardly warming at all; but all around, the snow glistened despite the dirt, and beside him, Betty's hair was the color of pale honey.

He blew out a breath.

Then Jughead took off his hat and put it on Betty. He brushed the back of his fingers against her cold cheek and made a face at her when she opened her mouth. So Betty didn't say anything, all the way down the block, while Jughead wrestled with how disgustingly winter wonderland the landscape had become and with the high pitched shriek of embarrassment in his head and with the dimple peeking out from one corner of Betty's mouth. He didn't really have any resolutions, he supposed. He only meant to continue the year as he had begun it.

* * *

They were nearing the end of their walk when Betty called out hello to old Mr. Blake, who was bent over pulling on galoshes in the open door of his garage. "How are you today, Miss Betty," returned Mr. Blake, straightening. Then there was nothing for it but to follow Betty through the snow, up the driveway, and stand awkwardly while Mr. Blake asked after Betty's family and how everything was at school. Then Mr. Blake said, "And who is your young man?" and Betty reflexively answered, "This is my Jughead," and Jughead had never been so grateful for anything in his life as for the shovel casually leaning against the garage door. He mumbled, "Do you -- " and then decided he didn't care. He grabbed the shovel and fled to shovel Mr. Blake's driveway.

It didn't take long. When he finished, and any redness in his cheeks might be blamed on exertion, he went to return the shovel. Betty and Mr. Blake were chatting about the woodpeckers terrorizing the neighborhood recently, but as Jughead neared, she broke off with a bright, "Oh, well, we won't trouble you anymore, Mr. Blake. Happy New Year's!" Then they had to linger a few more moments to exchange the appropriate pleasantries.

Only when they were on the sidewalk again and past Mr. Blake's yard, did Betty beam up at him. Bright and terrifying, she told him, "Mr. Blake's head of the neighborhood watch."

Jughead looked at her. So word inevitably would get back to Alice: how the Jones kid had been walking with Betty, and how he had shoveled Mr. Blake's driveway. Jughead wondered if he should feel manipulated by how Betty had so smoothly engineered this, but mostly he just felt impressed.

"How did you know I would shovel his driveway?"

Betty shrugged. "I didn't. Just that you'd make a good impression."

" _What_."

And then, incredibly, baffingly, impossibly, she said, "You always do."

* * *

When they returned to the Andrews house, the garage door was open but there were no movements that they could discern from the end of the driveway, nor any guitar sounds. Betty checked the postbox for mail. There were only advertisements. Jughead said, "Bet you they're making out in the truck. Young love."

Betty poked him with a _PennySaver_. "Sucker's bet, gramps," she said, and then flicked open the _PennySaver_. "Do you want to go garage sale-ing next weekend?"

"Do those happen in January?"

Betty flipped through a few pages and sighed. "Not really, I guess. I'm looking for a checkerboard cake pan set."

"Buy it off some sketchy guy on eBay like a normal person."

This got a laugh but Betty worked her way through the rest of the _PennySaver_. Idly, she asked, "What's JB listening to recently? Send you a new playlist?"

"Oh boy," said Jughead. He pulled out his earphones and set to untangling them. "She's into mixtapes recently. Like, old school mixtapes. Like, I think she dug out a bunch of cassette tapes from somewhere and she's -- cutting them? Taping them?" He shook his head. "Do you even remember cassettes?" Earphones untangled, he plugged them into his phone and handed one earbud to Betty. "She's been listening to this a lot."

Betty closed the _PennySaver_ , took out the rest of the mail from the postbox and tucked them under her arm, shuffled closer to him and put in the earbud. They stood together on the curb, one pair of headphone between the two of them. Softly came through the sound of a piano, then a harmonica, wistful -- "Oh, the Boss," realized Betty. She smiled, eyes flickering up at him. "One of my favorites."

"JB's taste is impeccable."

"Mmm," agreed Betty. They listened quietly. Betty moved closer, stuck her hands into his coat pockets, pressed her cold nose against his throat.

"You want to go in?" he asked.

She shook her head. "After this. ....This part is my favorite --" quietly murmuring along, " _you ain't a beauty but, hey, you're all right_."

It was on the tip of his tongue, that she _was_ a beauty, that she was the prettiest girl he knew -- but Jughead looked at her lowered eyes, her head resting against his shoulder, the relaxed curve of her shoulders. He held his tongue.

"It's the most romantic thing," she whispered, like it was a confession.

Jughead didn't know much about girls and makeup and feminine standards of beauty, but he knew something of not coming up to snuff. And still, she had said to him, _you always do_. He took the mail from her and they stood there until the end of the song.

* * *

They left the mail on the dining table. Betty took off his hat and pulled it over his head, carefully tucking back his hair. "You're decent again, Mr. Jones."

It turned out that Archie and Veronica were actually upstairs playing _MarioKart_. Archie looked increasingly betrayed every time Veronica blue-shelled him. " _Where_ are these coming from?" he demanded.

Jughead stretched out on the bed behind them to watch. Betty sat down on the floor next to Veronica.

"It's the same trick with geese migration," Veronica told Betty. "And cycling. You minimize the drag by exploiting the leader's slipstream."

Archie whirled around to stare at her in consternation. On screen, his Yoshi flew off the rainbow bridge into eternity. "Oh, there you go again," mourned Veronica. "And of course not _actually_ , Archiekins. It's a video game, there's no real air drag, the aerodynamics are all made up. Now move -- I want to play with Betty."

"Oh, I'm really bad at this," Betty demurred.

"It's easy to pick up. I saved Princess Peach for you, come on." So Betty went.

 Archie got up and flung himself next to Jughead on the bed. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and silently writhed for a moment.

"Wow," Jughead pronounced, whereupon Archie relented and burst in laughter.

**Author's Note:**

> [1] _From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler_ , E. L. Konisberg
> 
> [2] "Oh dear," said the nice Wendy, "I don't mean a kiss, I mean a thimble."
> 
> "What's that?"
> 
> "It's like this." She kissed him.
> 
> "Funny!" said Peter gravely. "Now shall I give you a thimble?"
> 
> \-- Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie
> 
> [3] you ain't a beauty but, hey, you're all right / and that's all right with me
> 
> \-- _Thunder Road_ , Bruce Springsteen


End file.
